


Discovery Distressed: The Story of Loretta Zacarias Romero

by orphan_account



Category: Statesverse
Genre: Final work of the original Statesverse AU, Florida-centric, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23880655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: To Mrs. Shroyer, if you find this because you're making sure I'm not plagiarising, HI!!!!! It's Patsy.An 8K word fic because English Class...
Kudos: 7





	Discovery Distressed: The Story of Loretta Zacarias Romero

When she signed under her papá’s name on the Adams-Onís Treaty, she never expected to go past territory status. She’d been a colony for 250 years under her papá’s government originally. Sure, her papá hadn’t found her right as her little peninsula was discovered, but that’s how she was born-  _ discovery. _ The prospect of even more new land with possibly even more riches. Well, that’s all the conquistadors came for and wanted,  _ riches _ .

They'd look at her people and sneer- look at  _ her _ and sneer harder- until they showed them the golden rock, golden like her hair. They'd take all the rocks they could and leave again. It was calmer with papá and her siblings.

Emphasis would go on the  _ -er _ . She never knew calm.

She was found, a tiny screaming baby, by her mother. She never learned her mother’s name. She only knew her face through the faces she would make as she pulled on the mysteriously blonde curls.

When people came and began constructing something ( 1) , that’s when she saw her papá. That’s when he scooped her up and took her away- far away from the men building. He spoke in a tongue she doesn’t remember learning. He takes her away on another ship far enough away that the builders won’t notice- at least they wouldn’t until it’s gone.

He doesn’t name her until they reach another landmass, at sunset the next day. He takes one look at how the oranges and yellows of the sky make the pink tones in her eyes stand out. He names her Loretta, crowned with laurel, from the way her curls form the curvature of the petals in a tiara of gold and brown. Vivid memories of his own sister giving him a bright pink laurel on a birthday that felt so long ago resurface. It's the perfect name. 

There were others like she is ( 2) , undying and eternally young, born from discovery and pain. Seven more, five boys and 2 girls, the youngest smaller than Loretta was. It takes her no time to believe they are her family. They're every bit as amicable and chaotic as the children she'd watch from afar in awe. When one of them calls her  _ hermanita _ for the first time her chest feels so full and warm and she's sure she looks as warm and full as she feels.

Her childhood was colored with gifts and loneliness. They weren’t allowed to go outside for the most part. They stayed inside and learned. Arabic, Spanish, arithmetic, etiquette- all the lessons blurred until she could do anything without a thought. Papá spoiled them, exotic fabrics and beautiful jewellery. He'd given them everything they'd ever wanted (except for a father figure that was there for them).

They had a nanny that kept them company and supervised their education alongside their tutors. She didn’t do much in the terms of being a companion, but she provided a parental figure. (It would surprise Spain later when they take on her paternal last name as their maternal last name.)

The only problem was that papá was distant, disappearing at odd times and never bringing up where he went. When their papá isn’t there, they explore.

The slaves from the sugar cane plantation next door intrigue all eight of them. They tie their hair up in colorful cloths and they speak of a god who cares about everyone. 

Their curiosity gets the better of them and they ask the neighbor’s slaves to tell them about this god- Allah ( 3) . (They go with them to a small gathering where they pray and read a large fabric-bound book. All the women cover their hair in cloths, and they all try to show as little skin as possible.)

It takes a lot of trial and error to find out some very vital things, such as the fact that La Florída can’t eat any meat other than seafood. If she were human, she would have died after the first instance of her whole face and tongue swelling impossibly, a rash burning overtop the swelling, as far down as her hands.

Spain takes notes, all of his children seem to have reactions to meats along the lines of La Florída’s

Loretta gets sick easily, being small and young. It’s not as fun as it sounds. When she’s under only one blanket, she’s too cold. When she’s under two blankets, she’s too hot. She has to eat soup and bread no matter what. 

Once her fever breaks, she climbs out of her bed and hobbles over to her brothers’ room. Santiago and Tomás have pushed their beds together for the time being and Loretta silently pads her way over and climbs into the middle of the two beds. She crawls under the blankets and falls asleep.

They aren’t happy the next morning, grumbling about how they could get sick from her. 

It takes months of coming in and using them as security blankets for them to become used to her late-night excursions into their room. It becomes a routine. An hour after the nanny tucks them in, Loretta will leave her room and head off to her brothers’ rooms. She’ll crawl into bed with them and fall asleep soundly.

The plantation owners find out about their slaves- their  _ property _ in their own eyes- being teachers. Cuba- Carlos- covers for them once using a tone that could make anyone believe him. It doesn’t work the second time; he has bruises on his face in the shape of hands from where the neighbor's backhanded him twice. 

The dog drags Puerto Rico- Adrián- out of the house and goes back for Loretta. Loretta’s leg is still in the door when the house falls. The ones who got out are all frozen stiff.

Mexico- Santiago, the youngest- is still inside. It takes 2 days to find him.

Papá stops being distant and starts begging people for help. The doctors aren't gentle, but they help. They set Santiago's back until it starts to heal, and since they don't know what they are, they suspect that he will die soon.

They all know he won't. He'll live in constant pain if he has to but he will live.

Santiago is bound in his bed and can barely sit up. Papá apologises and apologises until the words “I'm sorry" hold no meaning anymore. 

He does it to all of them and it breaks their hearts.  _ He's sorry for failing to keep them safe. He's sorry for being so distant- so much so that they risked putting themselves into danger to have a parent figure who taught them what they wanted to learn. He's sorry for being so powerless because he can't do more to help them.  _

They try to live normally, but Adrian has to relearn how to write with his right hand now since his left can't move, Loretta is limping and if she doesn't have something to hold onto, she falls, Santiago can't stand up.

A far-off war ends according to their papá. They were the prizes of war passed on ( 4) . Papá gets a faraway look when he tells them. If he tears up and sobs silently, they don’t see it.

England is a far-off person to them, and they’ve never met another nation like Papá is. Papá tells them that he’s a vicious devout Christian in the church that shares his name. He says that England will try and convert them, and if they know better then they’d hide it ( 5) .

He looks as if the conversation is hitting close to home.

They don't ask, but they snoop.

Melanie- the Bahamas- reads the papers aloud, and the words  _ reconquista _ and  _ Christian takeover _ resonate with them.

After she was a Spanish territory, she became English ( 4) . She can remember crying for hours after she got onto the boat for England. She missed the loud and noisy environment that was the living room, Papá getting food stuck in his beard and pretending that he doesn't notice nor understand when one of them tells him that he has food stuck to his face. They'd laugh so hard it hurts when he'd put on mock betrayal and say, " _ My image is ruined now- how will I ever get past the humiliation _ ?  _ Tomatoes in my beard _ !  _ I'm going to get kicked from the band of empires _ !"

It hurt for her to think about it, so she tried not to. She'd just write in a book she's had for ages and continue copying her Arabic script until she couldn't write in Spanish for days.

England comes and Loretta thinks he doesn’t look as evil as Papá said he would look. Loretta is the one who answers the door. He says something in a language she can’t even piece together, so she gives a signal that says “ _ wait _ ” and hobbles off to find her papá.

When Loretta comes back with her papá, England has walked inside and is searching viciously through their stuff. “ _ Daph- _ Theodore,” Papá says, gritting his teeth.

"Felipe. I'm here to survey my prizes. I hear the land is prosperous." Theodore grins and it's nothing like when Loretta's brother grinned at her when she walked a whole 10 steps without holding onto something. It looks evil and cruel.

Now she understands why Papá is afraid of him.

"Who's she? A little slave girl?" England laughs and it hurts even though she doesn't know what he said.

"Papá ..." Loretta looks at England and she looks so hurt.

Spain motions for her to come over and give him a hug. He mutters  _ it's alright _ into her hair and kisses the top of her head. He tells her to go check on Santiago and she does.

England gives him a day before he takes Loretta. Spain helps her stuff all of her good-fitting dresses and shoes and books into a trunk. Loretta doesn't understand why she has to pack, but all she knows is Papá looks sad.

He opens her trunk the next morning and stuffs a cloth-bound book in it before he helps her to the dining room for breakfast. He brushes her hair as she eats and gets increasingly frustrated at the idea of curly hair as it just gets bigger and frizzier. He eventually gets it brushed enough that it'll sit in the low chignon bun just above the nape of her neck. He weaves four ribbons around the coil and lets the ends of one hang loose.

When England shows up and looks at his pocket watch, Spain kisses Loretta's forehead and tells her to be good, no matter how hard it is. Spain loads the small trunk on the back end of the carriage taking her to the docks.

He's crying as the carriage gets father and farther from view. It only gets worse when he remembers that England will come back for more of his children later.

England tries to speak with her, but the clueless looks on her face show how well that was going. Even when he uses the broken Spanish he'd learned, it doesn't help.

Loretta pulls a book out of her trunk and reads the whole thing four times through on the trip to the docks. She mouths the words as she reads and sometimes breathes out the words so he can barely hear what she is reading. It's in no language he knows.

He scoffs at the idea of a girl, physically no older than fourteen, reading foreign books, but if she really is like he is, then it wouldn't matter. All personifications must be learned so they can be involved in their own land and its people.

He mentally prepares what he's going to say to the tutor who will be responsible for having this girl unlearn all of this nonsensical garbage and learn what she'd properly need to run her colony.

Loretta barely gets settled into her new home when England leaves her with a tutor and servants, Spanish speaking ones- he's not cruel. The servants translate that he'd be back with more of his  _ prizes _ in a few months. Loretta sets the books on her bed and starts putting away her dresses and shoes in the small wardrobe. The servants come in to try and do what they aren't being paid to do, but Loretta jumps whenever her door opens and keeps moving her things away from them as they try. So, they leave her alone.

She finally gets to take a good look at the book Papá had set into her trunk-  _ the Quran _ . Underneath the neat Arabic text is handwritten translations into Spanish- her papá's handwriting. The words make the page so busy and barely readable unless she uses her fingers to block off text.

She writes the translations into an empty journal left in the room, fills up half of it before England comes back.

The tutor takes one look at her and sneers like the conquistadors used to. He gives her a basic assessment of her arithmetic and language skills. She cannot read English or French at all ( 6) , and somehow that offends him. What offends him more is the various little notes in Arabic on what she can translate from Spanish to Arabic.

She reads her book, the same one she'd read so many times on the voyage to England. It's a small book of fairytales and fables, old folktales finally cautified into writing. She writes the Arabic translations of all the words she knows above the printed text.

The tutor tuts at her translations and tries to take the book. Loretta holds onto it and shouts for help. The book gets ripped in half right in the middle of a story. The still wet ink stains her hands and gets all over the sleeve of her dress.

The tutor throws half of the book into a pile of discarded papers. Loretta steals it at midnight that night. In the morning she asks a servant if they can fix it.

Loretta begins her English lessons and the words look so ugly and foreign that they hurt her brain. The tutor mouths off at her for not even trying when she genuinely doesn't understand.

When England returns, he gets a message from the servants that Loretta has only been screamed at because he isn't giving context during her English lessons. He expects her to look at it once and understand it perfectly. It isn't how anyone learns a language.

England grumbles at the servants. He really expects them to do their work and not say a word to him other than "yes, sir" or "no, sir."

England speaks to the tutor, screams at him for his troubles, and sets off to find a more competent tutor.

The new tutor treats her like a child but that doesn't bother Loretta at all. She assumes that he was expecting a much younger student. He asks her to tell him her name and write it for him and she already likes him more than the other one. When she writes  _ Loretta _ on the chalkboard and says it in her Caribbean accent, he smiles and says it's beautiful in both Spanish and English.

He's supposed to be called  _ Mister Steward _ , but he lets her call him Jonathon. 

Loretta laughs and pronounces it the Spanish way until she gets comfortable using the English J sound.

The way he teaches resonates with Loretta and how she learned what Arabic she knew. He tells her to write sentences in a familiar language in one color of ink and then write the English words in for some of the others when she learns them in another color. He pulls out a jar of beautiful red ink and he demonstrates for her, but he does it backwards. " _ El gato licks his tail to clean it _ ." He writes  _ El gato _ in red ink, then switches to her pen to write the rest of the sentence. It's bold and sticks out well in her mind.

In the same amount of time as she had with the other tutor, Loretta makes exponential progress.

There's a new girl in the house, in the study where Loretta does her lessons. She has bright red hair and a smile so wide that it looks like her cheeks will fall off. She looks at Mister Jonathan, asks a question that Loretta only knows one word in, and nods when Mister Jonathon answers.

She introduces herself in Spanish and says that she doesn't speak much. She doesn't say half the words right and it makes Loretta smile in that way she did when her brothers made a joke.

Her name is Mary, and she likes feeding the ducks outside the house. She can read and write Spanish better than she can speak it. She's learning French and Italian, and can barely remember any of it.

She stays with them and helps Loretta with her first basic sentences and helps Lora translate her fairytales into English. She helps Loretta with the pronouns and articles and verbs.

Mary's Spanish gets better every time she interacts with Loretta. She pronounces words better and has less frequent pauses as she's thinking about what to say and how to say it. Mister Jonathon had just given Loretta a list of words for her to start looking at getting used to seeing. Mary blushes at the list,  _ romantic terms _ .

Loretta bounces in her seat at the idea of starting to learn romantic terms. She asks Mary to help her translate them originally and explain the ones she doesn't know yet. Loretta understands most of the list, but the ones that she doesn't understand make her seem so innocent.

The simplest one she cannot comprehend is ' _ a kiss. _ ' 

"A kiss." Loretta tries the word out. It sounds so off, even in Spanish-  _ un beso _ . When she asks Mary what a kiss is, Mary's eyes go wide.

Mary's so dumbstruck that she reverts back to English. "You don't know?"

Loretta tries to hold the conversation in English, for practice. "No. It is what?"

Mary stammers for a bit and turns a red that rivals her father's ink. "I can't explain it well."

Loretta nods along. "You can ... um," she mutters under her breath until she finds the right word, "try! You can try."

Mary would be proud if she wasn't so incredibly embarrassed and flustered. "I can... I can show you. That'd explain what it is." 

Her tone and body language say worried, but Loretta is just curious so she nods excitedly.

Mary tells her to close her eyes, and Lora shuts them tightly before relaxing. After a second she can feel something warm press against her lips and the shock of that makes her open her eyes and pull back a bit. 

It's that same warm feeling she felt when she was little and her older brother called her  _ hermanita _ for the first time. It's warm and comforting and it feels so great. She gently holds her hand just above her lips as she goes from shocked to smiling.

Mary has her hand over her mouth as she looks around the room frantically before she says, "Goodnight.  _ Please _ don't tell my dad that I did that. (7)"

Loretta is giddy through the whole next day, but Mary leaves to go back home.

England comes back with more children, but 3 catch her eye. They look like they’re related and they all cling to each other. Their skin is a touch lighter than hers, and considering the fact that England thought she was a slave because of her skin colour, she can imagine how they were spoken to. 

She follows behind the servants, eager to meet them. They’re around her age! She follows behind them as they’re led to their rooms, the two boys separated from their sister. 

The girl gets put into the other bed in Loretta’s room. She’s looking around at the half-decorated, half-lived-in room, her brown eyes shaking ever so slightly.

“Hello?” Loretta says. It comes out as a question and the girl jumps.

“Hello.” 

“You are okay?” Loretta asks.

“No. I don’t know where Beau and Mathe are going.” She sits on the bed, making Loretta grimace because the sheets are caked in dust.

“Another room. Hall end. This side.” Loretta holds up her left hand. She shrugs at her attempts to communicate.

The girl nods and speeds out of the room and down the hall.

When dinner-time comes around, Loretta sits in her usual chair. The maid that recognised that she could only eat certain foods brings her out a plate with some oysters and cooked vegetables.

England scowls. “Now why is she eating that?”

“She cannot eat dinner past the vegetables, sir. Mister Steward got into contact with Mister Zacarias de la Rosa to confirm this. Apparently her face swells and rashes flare up when she eats any meat he’s tried to feed her, except for seafood.”

The three new colonies, as Loretta is guessing, listen as they sit down in the empty chairs. Loretta waits until everyone else has a plate before she starts eating. 

England scoffs at her polite gesture. “She doesn’t even say grace.” He then turns to the new faces. “I trust that you found your rooms well.”

Only two of them speak up with a hesitant, “Yes sir.” The third nods politely.

England walks over to the one who nodded, “Speak when you are spoken to.”

“Sir. I’m sorry but he can’t speak. We’ve never heard him speak once,” The other boy comes to his defense.

England grumbles about rude children and sits back down.

The rest of dinner happens in silence, past Loretta’s quiet  _ thank you  _ to the servants when she takes her plate to the kitchen to clean it off.

The girl is on her now clean bed. She rests her head against the wall, reading by candlelight. 

“What is your name?” Loretta asks after she settles herself onto her bed.

“Melodie. I don’t know what my colony name is.”

“I am Loretta. La Florída.” 

“That’s pretty.”

Melodie continues helping Loretta with her English, and her method is completely different from Mister Jonathan’s or even Mary’s. Melodie uses pictures to teach Loretta. 

Loretta is enthralled by her ability to draw, staring in awe so much that she misses what she says completely.

England sits in on one of Loretta’s English lessons and though his nose wrinkles at the informal nature of Mister Jonathan’s interactions with Loretta, he’s pleased with her fluency. They hold semi-intelligent conversations and have begun reading books together.

Loretta runs off after lunch to the makeshift schoolroom. It would be empty, and no one would be there to judge her or tell her that what she’s doing is wrong. She knows Mecca is south of York and the southern wall of the room is the one by the door.

She’s mid-prayer when England comes in looking for her.

She can’t give an excuse once her prayer has ended, since Christianity is one of the most foreign things to her. 

Mister Jonathan looks over at Loretta, who is confused as England speaks to the man in fancy robes. “Mister Steward has also been allowing her to follow another God,” England sneers to the man.

Mister Jonathan’s gaze hardens. “This is just as new to me as it is to you,  _ Theodore _ .”

The man in robes asks her a plethora of questions that she barely understands and cannot answer. At one point, he calls England over and asks if she’s mute. 

He hands Loretta a large, heavy book before they leave. 

She doesn’t even understand the title-  _ The Holy Bible _ . It sits in the schoolroom unopened.

They force her to go to mass, and it conflicts with her personal times of prayer. When she is able to get some alone time, she prays and asks for forgiveness for missing prayers. Allah would understand if nobody else could.

England leaves one day and Mister Jonathan relieves all the rules he’d left on her. “The pressure was affecting your studies, Miss Loretta.”

In breaks from teaching, Mister Jonathan and Loretta play games, read, and tour the surrounding areas. Loretta would love this country if she could see more of it.

Sometimes, Melodie, Beau, and Mathe come along with them and they’d buy bread from one of the many shops in town and eat it with cheese. Other times they’d run around the woods and find wild blackberries and strawberries and eat them.

Mister Jonathan takes them across the channel and into France. Melodie and Mathe fit right in, chattering about with the local people and getting them chocolate and crêpes and foods Loretta doesn’t even know existed.

The merriment is destroyed when England returns years later, pissed. Mister Jonathan questions him and the only response they receive is, “That damned colony.”

They ask about what happened in lessons, and Mister Jonathon sighs. “England lost a colony, America. The colony received French and Spanish aid ( 9) .”

England yells at Loretta to pack up her things because they had a trip to make.

She’s sitting between her papá and the Minister Plenipotentiary, Luis de Onís y González-Vara ( 10) . Her papá mutters under his breath about the absurdity- she and her land is not a burden. She won’t declare her own independence. She won’t cause more economic downfall. 

King Ferdinand won’t listen. America has been trying to buy her land since their war for independence, and they are paying a good sum of money for it. It doesn’t matter how much she begs and cries because she just became her father’s child again after 25 years as England’s colony.

America is a small boy, younger than new Spain, and he’s looking up at Spain with wide brown eyes. Two other people sit with him besides the president and the Secretary of State, most likely states. Their eyes glance between Loretta and Spain, most likely wondering how she is his child. Most people immediately rescind ideas of relation because of the immediate differences, namely Loretta’s blonde hair. 

One of them holds out their hand for Spain to shake. She’s physically not as old as Loretta, about a year or two younger though she’s much larger in comparison. “Madalinn Jones, State of Massachusetts,” she smiles.

Spain shakes it hesitantly, reciting, “Felipe Zacarias de la Rosa, Kingdom of Spain.” Her hand is more akin to the size of La Florída’s. 

Madalinn holds out her hand to Loretta. Loretta’s small hands shake, and she cannot meet her eyes, but she does shake her hand gently and introduce herself. “Loretta Zacarias-Romero, La Florída.” The words come out choked, small sobs escaping.

The adults speak of the terms of cession. Three years to the date and Spain’s youngest daughter will become the newest territory of the United States of America.

Onís draws up a document for them all to sign, formal names and personification titles. Then Onís pulls out a secondary document for just the people to sign, no personifications. 

Loretta looks so small tucked into her father’s side, shaking from the reality of being tossed around again. 

Spain is understandably upset alongside Loretta. He’d just gotten his daughter back, but now she’s being sold because of a fever dream the King is having based on American and Haitian Independence ( 11) . Haiti may have been his daughter at one point, but France had bought her and the result had been a literal bloodbath. 

She’d written to him about how she swears that she wasn’t involved, but she did not stop it. Loretta had read the letters.

Spain pushes her braided hair back as he walks in to check on his daughter- his precious daughter. She stirs and rolls onto her side and he smiles.

He should at least try to enjoy having her for another few years.

When she arrives in Washington, District of Columbia, she feels so small. She knows no one and she barely speaks English well enough to be understood. She doesn’t know who to look for, where to go, or what to do now.

She looks at her 3 small trunks full of clothes, books and presents, the elegant scarves Papá had brought out to her for her birthday, since he wouldn’t be there for it. Her hands drifted to her locket with paintings of her father, brothers, and sisters. 

She sits on her sturdiest trunk, the other two to her left. The smells of baked goods fill the air and she resigns to sitting still until someone who could help finds her. 

People don’t even bat an eye at the well dressed girl sitting on her trunks. They walk by her and they keep going about their way.

Some kids look and point; others come up and tell her things in a language she barely understands. One tugs on her mother’s skirts and she and her mother come up with some pastries from the bakery. Loretta is shocked into silence, and then thanks them sloppily in 3 languages.

There’s berries and fruits in the pastries and Loretta has never tasted anything so sweet in her life. 

The sun is setting when someone approaches and asks, in a hushed tone, “La Florída?”

Her head perks up and she nods enthusiastically. 

“ _ Sígueme, por favor _ .”  _ Follow me, please _ . He pulls her trunks into a wagon pulled by a beautiful black horse. He hoists himself into the saddle and Loretta holds onto the side of the wagon to keep up. 

They walk for a long while through large fields and past blue rivers. It feels endless, and soon fatigue takes over her small body. She pulls herself into the wagon and the ache in her feet and ankles grows from the now lack of movement.

The man- no, boy- turns his head to check on her when he stops hearing the pattering of feet, and he smiles when he finds her sitting in the wagon. Loretta tries to take a good look at him, but the darkness and shadows obscure his face and his mannerisms.

She doesn’t even realise when she dozes off, but it does scare her when she wakes up and it’s so far into the day that the sun is around the midday position. She pulls herself up and winces at the bright light. 

“ _ Estamos casi allí _ , chica.” The boy says. She nods and rubs her eyes. Almost there, almost to her new home. The farmland she sees spreads on for miles, with tiny dots that may be houses or livestock in the distance. 

She turns to look at the boy, now the midday light leaves nothing obscured. He’s tall, dressed more in the way common people dress, with shining brown hair. When he turns to look at her, he smiles. “¿Hablas inglés?”

“Sí, un poco.” She barely remembered her English lessons past the moment with Mary.

“What’s your name?” The boy asks

“Loretta Zacarias Romero. Yours?”

“Jamie Holcomb. I’m South Carolina. Nice to meet you, Loretta.”

Jamie turns around and keeps navigating the new area, familiar to him and the horse. Loretta watched the sun between almost-closed fingers until she deemed it an acceptable time. She quickly checked her trunks to find her copy of the Quran.

The next time Jamie turns around to check on her, she’s kneeling in front of her trunk and mouthing words he cannot recognise. He turns around, giving her the privacy she probably wants.

“Ameen ( 8) ,” Loretta finishes her prayer and pushes back the hair that fell in her face. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. Silently, she wraps her hair around the fabric and then ties it around the crown of her head, pulling her thick hair away from her neck and shoulders.

Just as she settles her hair into a comfortable position, the horse stops and she watches Jamie climb down off the saddle. He holds out his hand and Loretta takes it, climbing out of the wagon. When she’s firmly settled on the ground, she lets go and turns around to help with her trunks.

The house is bustling with energy. Children are running outside. People are sitting on the porch, mending clothes. There’s someone giving horse-riding lessons to another. Someone on the porch recognises Jamie and comes running down the path, tackling him in a hug. Loretta steps aside so she isn’t tackled.

“Is this Florida?” The girl asks.

“Sure is. She’s not much of a talker, doesn’t understand English very well.” Jamie pushes himself off the ground and wipes off the stray dust on his pants.

Loretta keeps her head down. 

“I’ll get Maddie.” The girl runs off back into the house.

Jamie looks down at Loretta and she gives him a questionable look.

“Mi hermanita ( 12) , North Carolina.”

Loretta only nods.

Madalinn, whom Loretta actually recognises, comes out and grabs one of the trunks. “Hello again. We have a room made for you.”

Loretta’s face must be blank and confused, because Jamie translates it as best he can into Spanish. Once she understands, she nods and makes a “lead the way” motion. She keeps her head low, studying the way Madalinn’s petticoats sway as she walks. She doesn’t want to see the way the others turn and look at her. 

Madalinn turns and a small girl, about half Loretta’s physical age, gasps. She has shiny dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. “You’re really pretty, miss.”

Loretta doesn’t know if the girl was talking to her, so she doesn’t respond. She picks up her pace and follows behind Madalinn even closer. 

The room she’s given is small, smaller than her room when she was under English rule. It seems as though she is alone in her room, unlike her room under English rule. She can’t help but think about Melodie and her brothers, how they always butted heads against England’s.

She sets her clothing trunk on the small wardrobe by the window. Her religious-items trunk is put under her bed. The third trunk, the one with her good shoes, books, and blankets, is opened. 

It scares her when the door opens. A girl with dark red hair and blue eyes comes in with a basket. “Sorry. Just gettin’ the sheets. We didn’t know when you’d show up, so we were saving them until you came.” The girl pulls at the sheets on the small bed. 

Loretta moves out of the way so she can get the sheets off. She pulls the pillowcase off the pillow and puts it in the large basket. The girl notices the small, careful amount of help she’s providing and smiles.

“Thank you. My name’s Charlotte, by the way. These will be done after supper.” She hoists the basket onto her hip and treads out.

She sets the four blankets she’d brought with her onto the small table by the bed. The books go onto the highest shelf she can reach in the wardrobe. Her shoes go right next to it. 

She carefully kneels down and opens the trunk under her bed, pulls out a small jar of ink, a pen, and some paper.

She uses her empty trunk as a chair, and she starts writing a letter to her family. (She puts the letter under a stack of ones by the front door when she eventually leaves her room.)

When she leaves her room, letter in pocket, she immediately walks right into someone. When she stands back up she turns to the person she walked into and says a frantic, “Sorry! Lo siento!”

The person Loretta ran into doesn’t fall, but they do turn to her, rather annoyed. The boy is taller than she is, has familiar dark skin, but it isn’t anyone Loretta recognises. “Hey, it’s fine. Accidents happen.” 

Loretta nods, utterly confused, and turns to go to where she wanted.

She eventually finds her way to the front living room. The windows are open and the slight spring breeze waves the curtains around. She sits down on one of the sofas. The open window allows the noisy cheering of children to infiltrate the home. 

Some people come in and sit across from her. She looks up at them briefly before turning back to her book. They talk amongst themselves and Loretta ignores them until someone taps on her shoulder.

She looks up, placing her fingers onto her page where she stopped. “¿Qué?” 

It’s Jamie.

“¿Estás haciendo bien?” He asks.

Loretta shrugs. “Demasiada gente.” She makes a small gesture at the amount of people she can see and hear.

“Te acostumbrarás.”  _ You’ll get used to it _ . He smiles. Loretta nods. “ _ Dos de nosotros hemos dicho que ya te han conocido antes de hoy _ .” Loretta pales. She didn’t know any of them, how can two of them already know her?

“Quién?” Loretta asks, petrified.

“Ohio y Michigan. Elodie y Beau.” 

“Conocí a Melodie y Beau, pero no Elodie.” Melodie and Beau, she knew. No Elodies. 

“Creo que podrían ser la misma persona.” Jamie gives her a “follow me” motion and he leads her to the other side of the house.

There’s another living room on the side of the house that Jamie leads her to. It’s much quieter and colder, with no warm spring breeze coming in the open windows. Jamie tells her to sit down, and she does, before he sets off down a hallway.

He comes back with two very familiar faces.

“Melodie? Beau?” Loretta asks.

Melodie’s eyes light up, but she corrects Loretta. “Elodie. The youngests kept mispronouncing it until it stuck.”

“Oh.” Loretta smiles and taps her book a bit.

She starts on a very hesitant, frequently needing translations related  _ hesitancy _ , speech about how she and Beau became states and how Loretta should be fine. Loretta nods along, a little overwhelmed.

“Oh! Also, I may have let people know that you can’t eat meat other than seafood. We take turns cooking, so everyone needs to know.” Elodie gives a hesitant smile, a guilty one.

Loretta nods. “It is fine. Necessary thing.” 

She’s still reading in the living room, and has been for a few hours now. She looks up when someone stands directly in front of her. The girl is small, about half her age physically, dark brown hair and light brown eyes.

“Hi! I think you’re really pretty, miss.” She smiles, a large smile with a few teeth missing. 

“Thank you,” Loretta gives a small smile before turning back to her book.

“What’s your name?” The girl sits down beside her. “I’m Delilah.”

“Loretta Zacarias Romero.”

“That’s a very pretty name, miss.”

Loretta is very keen on not meeting everyone. There’s a high probability that she’ll just be sold back to her papá in a few years, so she stays in her room and keeps to herself. Within a month, she had translated her books back and forth into Spanish, English, and Arabic. Within a month, she starts coming into the house’s library for more complex books to translate and read.

Everyone looks sad and tired according to her judgement. She knows that England had decided to fuel his pyromaniac tendencies and burn down the capital a decade ago. She doesn’t acknowledge the pain and suffering they must have felt.

Delilah comes up to her whenever she’s out of her room and tries to talk to her. Sometimes, Delilah would be pulled back by a blonde girl just barely younger than the brunette. 

It’s December when Delilah decrees that she, apparently, is adopting Loretta and then proceeds to latch herself onto her. Jamie and Elodie find this highly amusing, watching a little eight-year-old try and adopt a fifteen-year-old.

Delilah requests Loretta’s help wrapping presents for Christmas and she doesn’t understand why Loretta said she doesn’t have any. Loretta suggests using fabric scraps- cabbage ( 13) \- to wrap them.

Delilah watches in awe while Loretta delicately sews the fabric together. 

Loretta is very mindful of her actions towards others. It’s what she learned when she was little: be polite, only speak when spoken to, make yourself useful. It was a harsh learning process she would be lying if she’d say it never stuck.

Jamie finds this uspetting. He’d look over at everyone else, chatting away about menial topics, and then at Loretta who is either writing, reading, or doing chores. It’s bland. She could be doing anything but that and it would be better.

Madalinn sits Loretta down one afternoon and smiles. “You’ve reached the qualifications for statehood.” Statehood. She’d be equals with mostly everyone else. 

A little voice in her head chimes in with,  _ You’re only going to stay long enough for them to get tired of you and then you’ll be sold again _ .

Loretta looks horrified.

Congress scoffs at her, little brown and quiet Loretta ( 14) . They tell her the same thing but using unnecessarily big words that Loretta barely understands. Everyone speaks to her in words she barely understands. She doesn’t like it. Why can’t more people speak Spanish or Arabic? Only Jamie knows one of those languages.

They shove a document to her and she tries to read it, she even mouths the Spanish translations under her breath so she knows. It takes a while because of the nature of the document, and the Congressmen are huffing at how it takes more than 20 seconds for her to read the paper. She tries to read faster but all the words mold together and she has to blink a few times and go back.

Loretta wishes Madalinn were here to help her with the words.

She says a quick prayer under her breath and signs.

Congress lets Madalinn and Washington D.C.-  _ what was her name again? _ \- know about the signing, and probably complain to them about how long it took. Madalinn says something in an angry tone and storms away.

Loretta bites her lip and internally apologises for being such a nuisance.

Delilah finds her in her room, reading a book.

“You’re really boring.”

Loretta looks up, confused. “No?”

“Yes you are! You read books and you don’t talk. Your chores are the ones always done first. You don’t even eat with us for family dinner!” Delilah whines.

“I’m sorry?”

“Why don’t you like us?”

Loretta goes quiet. She doesn’t like them yet; she’s still very new to them. She doesn’t want to get attached to them and then be thrown around among countries again.

“I’m not used to everyone yet.” That’s Loretta’s excuse.

It hits her that she’ll be staying when Madalinn asks if she wants her papá to come to the ceremony. She must have looked like something hit her because Madalinn asks if she hit a touchy subject. 

“Do you mean that I’m going to stay here forever? I’m never going back to my papá?” Loretta sounds as if she’s going to cry.

Madalinn looks at her weirdly. “You didn’t know that?”

Loretta doesn’t know when Madalinn leaves beacuse she pulls her knees into her chest and sobs for the better part of the evening.

Jamie comes in and asks what’s wrong.

“I’m never going back to my papá.”

Jamie says nothing for a good minute before asking why that was a concern.

“He’s my papá! Most of my sisters and brothers are there. All the people who know what I like and how to do anything regarding me are there! My family is there.” Loretta’s voice climbs up the scale with every reason, and she can’t hear it but she’s yelling.

“Nobody cares about me more than my papá! He tried to keep England from taking my siblings and me. He yelled at King Ferdinand for selling me off! Why wouldn’t I want to go back to the people who love me? ( 15) ” 

Jamie’s silent.

The whole house is silent.

Loretta storms out and heads outside to get away from them. She just goes and goes. She heads past the property line and into the neighbor’s land. She goes through the neighbor’s land and into their neighbor’s. Eventually, she winds up in town.

Madalinn asks Jamie what happened and Jamie really cannot give an answer past  _ She thought we’d just give her up eventually _ .

Loretta prays for forgiveness in an alley- forgiveness for not being clean, forgiveness for not showing modesty and competence, and forgiveness for harming someone- even if the harming was done verbally ( 16) .

She heads back well after dark and everything is telling her this is a bad idea. She can barely see, she’s all alone, and she’s far from the house. She has no money, so she can’t spend the night in town.

She collapsed with exhaustion somewhere in between the town and the house.

Someone must have found her because she’s in her bed at home when she wakes up. She winces at the light. She’s always up before dawn for her first prayer- she must have already missed that. She winces at how dirty she is; and she goes to get water to draw herself a bath. It doesn’t matter if it’s warm or cold. She just needs to wash herself.

She’s about to settle into her tub when knocks come at the door. She ignores them as she starts to scrub.

Madalinn calmly tells her that she scared everyone when she finally comes out of her room. She sets a small plate of food Loretta cannot eat in front of her. Loretta looks down at the plate- some kind of meat, jam on bread, and eggs. She silently hopes that juice from the meat didn’t get onto the bread or eggs.

She picks off the pieces of the bread that are soaked with the juices, and just that alone causes the pads of her fingers to itch and turn red.

Madalinn sighs. “What don’t you like about it?”

“Mel-  _ Elodie _ said she told you what could kill me if I ate it?” Loretta’s eyebrow raises.

Madalinn gapes for a bit, her mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. “Elodie just said you prefer to not eat them!”

Loretta winces and curls in on herself. “I’d die  _ again _ if I would eat any meat other than seafood, or the parts that become juice. Milk and eggs are fine.”

Loretta sits quietly as someone pulls half of her hair into a small bun and arranges the rest of her hair in small curls adorned with flowers. The curls just barely touch her shoulders.

It feels wrong to sit in a dress that doesn’t cover her shoulders. It feels wrong to even look at her hair in a mirror when it’s not covered. Everything just feels wrong. She’s supposed to be modest, and her definition of modesty is covering the shoulders and hair.

She scours her trunks and wardrobe for something acceptable. Her old blue dress would have to do ( 17) . She also bites her lip. She thumbs through her hijabs, ones she hasn’t worn in ages. Her dress is a very lovely dark blue, and an orange one should cover her hair and her collarbones.

Loretta comes into the celebration last. It’s her day- she’s finally a state. She never thought she'd make it past a colony or territory. She’s been tossed around very minimally but it was enough to shake her into believing that she’d never have her own little form of autonomy.It was a fearsome experience. It was the kind of fear she’d eventually equate travelling to. 

Her papá meets her out on the balcony of the hall. “Mija, I’m so proud of you.”

Loretta doesn’t meet his eyes, she fiddles with the edges of her hijab. “I wanted to come home, not do this.”

His eyes go darker as he says, “I know.”

Delilah really must be correct,  _ she is no fun _ . It’s her day and she’s being the least jovial out of the whole group. Her brothers and sisters are talking amongst themselves, her father is speaking with Rowan. Everyone else has gone into their little cliques.

Jamie catches sight of her, still on the balcony, away from her party. She’d taken off her hijab and draped it around her shoulders like a shawl.

“Why don’t you keep it on?” Jamie asks, working his way to her side.

“It’s too dangerous.” 

“We won’t care. Zoe and Levi and Nona are Jewish, most of us don’t believe in a God even if we still go to church. You won’t stick out.” Jamie smiles.

“It’s my decision only between Allah and I.” Loretta draws her mouth into a thin line.

Jamie nods and shuts up. 

Even as Jamie tries to pull her in for at least one dance, Loretta holds strong. She isn’t the type to talk to everyone or dance at a party.

It’s interrupted by, “ _ See, Lora’s no fun _ !” coming from a very exasperated Delilah.

It’s just who Loretta has always been: her father’s daughter, a practicing Muslim in secret, and absolutely no fun. Now, however, she’s a state. With her father’s proud smile, she knows she’ll survive this, even if she isn’t with who she considers family. Again, she is discovered.

**Author's Note:**

> References  
> 1 Building of the settlement of San Augustín (St. Augustine) and the first successful settlement of the Colony of La Florída, 1565  
> 2 References to the colonies of the Bahamas (disc. 1492), Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) (disc. 1492), Cuba (disc. 1492), Trinidad and Tobago (disc. 1492), Puerto Rico (disc. 1493), and New Spain (Mexico) (disc. 1520)  
> 3 Slaves taken from North and West Africa to the Caribbean were raised Muslim and practiced the faith sparingly in secret, often incoporating Christian Elements to please slaveowners. Islam remains a practiced religion in the Caribbean. (Barcia, 2014)  
> 4 The end of the 7 Years War (1756-1763). As war prizes, France and Spain passed on multiple prosperous colonies to Great Britain, including, but not limited to, Canada, La Florída, and most of the Caribbean  
> 5 Spain recalls “Hide it” as a traumatic memory of the Reconquista and Spanish Inquisition, a period where Islamic Moors were either forcibly converted to Christianity or exiled to North Africa. Spain in this story is secretly Muslim.  
> 6 Due to the Norman takeover of England, French became the Language of Politics and Reason, the Lingua Franca. Due to Florida’s status as a colony personification, England would require that she learn the Lingua Franca from a young age.  
> 7 Homosexuality, though rarely recorded, did exist in the Colonial Era. Due to the prominence of church and the teachings of the Bible, homosexuality was considered a sin and had memorable consequences. This would lead to anxiety in any situation that may exibit homesexual actions, such as kissing another girl. (Hoffman, 2013)  
> 8 Ameen is the Islamic equivalent of Amen, said at the end of the 5 daily prayers. (K̲h̲ān̲ Vaḥīduddīn and K̲h̲ānam Farīdah, 2012)  
> 9 During the American Revolution, America won French aid in the Battle of Saratoga and Spanish Aid came later on.  
> 10 Minister Plenipotentiary, Luis de Onís y González-Vara, is the man who penned the Adams-Onís Treaty. Minister Plenipotentiary is the title of a diplomatic envoy and a direct link to the ruling monarch.  
> 11 The Haitian Revolution was mostly comprised of moved slaves that rebelled against their owners/masters and quite frequently that involved murder.  
> 12 South Carolina was originally Roanoke Colony. When the North and South Carolina split occurred, North Carolina formed, making her Jamie’s younger sister.  
> 13 Scrap fabric was colloquially called cabbage due to its visual similarity to the vegetable.  
> 14 Congress would have been full of rich men, which at the time would have been predominantly white; and by predominantly, I mean fully. They would be very racially biased towards any state-to-be or state that was of another race, meaning most of the United States.  
> 15 Family is one of the core laws of Shariah Islam, so Loretta would put a lot of emphasis in her family in her life (K̲h̲ān̲ Vaḥīduddīn and K̲h̲ānam Farīdah, 2012).  
> 16 In Islam, Muslim people are expected to wash themselves before they pray, a process called wudu. They are also expected to be modest, competent, and nonviolent. Violence is one of the most frowned-upon actions in Islam (K̲h̲ān̲ Vaḥīduddīn and K̲h̲ānam Farīdah, 2012).  
> 17 The ‘old blue dress’ would have been more of a romantic period style and less of a Victorian period style. A reference of this would be Women's Fashion Prints from 1830's - 1850's; Fashions from January 1840, a print of an unidentified women’s fashion magazine from the time (Cambell and Darvill, 2007; Franklin, 2020).
> 
> Works Cited  
> Barcia, Manuel. “West African Islam in Colonial Cuba.” Slavery & Abolition, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2014, pp. 292–305. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/0144039X.2013.865335.  
> Campbell, Wade, and Fred T. Darvill. “Women's Fashion Prints from 1830's - 1850's; Fashions from January 1840.” Darvill's Rare Prints, Darvill's Rare Prints, 2007, www.darvillsrareprints.com/images/images/Ladies%20Fashion%201830-1850/1840/January.jpg.  
> Franklin, Harper. “1840-1849 | Fashion History Timeline.” Fashion History Timeline, State University of New York, 26 Mar. 2020, fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1840-1849/.  
> Hoffman, Amy. “Do Tell: Recovering GLBT History.” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, no. 1, 2013, p. 22. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgbc&AN=edsgcl.314652152&site=eds-live.  
> K̲h̲ān̲ Vaḥīduddīn, and K̲h̲ānam Farīdah. The Quran. Goodword Books, 2012.  
> Mufti, Imam. “Core Values of Islam.” The Religion of Islam, Cooperative Office for Dawah in Rawdah, 27 May 2013, www.islamreligion.com/articles/10256/core-values-of-islam/.


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